I'm aware that these things have moved on since then but since only two people know the number of my phone and the other one always texts me it wasn't a matter of concern until I went to a suppliers' exhibition last week and in the process of being nice to the reps so that they'd give me free biros, highlighters, keyrings and fluffy toys to cheer up the library staff I accidentally won the sort of phone you can do things with - video people and make recordings. I'm sure that unlike its predecessor its capable of producing a proper tune so where do I start. Is JD still around? Will anyone confess to actually having an Atkin ring tone? Which song? Jan

I don't think the new phones have a "Composer" (as it's called on my ancient Knock Yer)and I believe nowadays you have to download ringtones (from the web?) rather than painstakingly program them in as we did in days of yore.

I recently switched to an LG phone that uses a fairly common chipset from Qualcomm. Because my service is P.A.Y.G. it doesn't have all those downloading features, which is good because it's made me get into the technicalities.

My phone, the LG VX 3200, like many other similar phones, will play ".mid" files, which turn out to be either MIDI or MP3. You can download them from tools like "BitPim" using the USB cable. As long as they are named "xxxxx.mid" where "xxxxx" is any lowercase name, the phone recognizes them.

BitPim doesn't fully support the VX 3200 yet, but it does allow general access to the internal filesystem (yes, it has files and folders !) which allows you to place music files and images in the phone's storage. In the case of music, I have to delete an index file on the phone and then (!!) reboot it. The phone's own software regenerates the index, including in the new files.

Of course at the end of all that, I haven't actually put a Pete Atkin file on the phone. Something like "Thirty Year Man" would work for me, although it's not as distinctive as MOTR. So far I've got the "Bobby Shaftoe" quote from Arthur Wilkinson's immortal "Three Rivers Fantasy" and a snippet of "In Dulce Jubilo". I've concentrated more on writing a program to produce image files for the phone, which turn out to be fairly simple bitmap files. I can sample any image on a PC and convert it to be downloaded to the phone.

Now my phone is not a GSM phone. It uses CDMA technology. UK phones might have completely different internals. There's a good chance, though, that if you can store an MP3 or MIDI as a ".mid" and can download it, you can have anything you want on your phone.

BitPim(www.bitpim.org) only supports CDMA phones using the Qualcomm chipset and the BREW file system.

In tekkie mode last night I sat down with the phone to see just what it would do, quite prepared to start fiddling with MP3s, MIDIs etc. I was a bit concerned that the lack of a USB cable at the moment would hinder progress but I hadn't realised just how wizzy this phone is. I found something called a sound recorder on it (in Settings, Sounds) and sat it in front of a loudspeaker while the keyboard bit of Landscapes was playing. It let me save it and then added it to its Ringtones list (although it did have one called Landscape already). I have to admit that as a ringtone it lacks a bit of stridency but it is lovely. Trouble is since no one else rings the number I have to ring myself up to hear it. Thanks to everyone for the assistance. I'll try out some of the suggestions on the old phone although I'm not sure that I'm keen on rebooting it! I suppose if I had a USB cable I could connect the new phone to the PC and download the ringtone file and transfer it that way. A project for the winter evenings! Jan